Susie Pollak on the summit of Mount Adams in New Hampshire. Pollak, sister of Free Press reporter Sally Pollak, got Lyme disease in spring 2012 at her farm in Wisconsin. / Courtesy photo

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“I’m afraid of ticks,” my sister, Susie, said to me the other day on the telephone.

She is the strongest woman I know — carrying 40 pounds of water in each hand across icy farm fields, wielding a scythe to cut big pastures. Susie and her husband were dairy farmers for 20 years in Maiden Rock, Wis., a tiny town on the Mississippi River. Now she grows vegetables and teaches middle school.

We were talking about ticks and Lyme disease because I spent last week reporting and writing stories about Lyme disease.

In March 2012, Susie flew from Minneapolis to Philadelphia to visit our family. When Susie got off the airplane she had a headache, a pretty bad one, and she went to our parents’ apartment to sleep. She slept all day and night and woke up with a severe headache and a stiff neck. Lifting her head was difficult. Opening her eyes was painful. She had fever and started to vomit.

My mother took Susie to the ER, where she was admitted and immediately given intravenous morphine. Susie was barely able to talk, but she reported having removed a tick from beneath one of her breasts the week before. It was presumed she had Lyme disease.

Doctors administered IV antibiotics along with the morphine. A spinal tap was clear, but her symptoms were consistent with neurological Lyme, Susie was told. Susie stayed in the hospital, on medication, overnight and slept at our parents’ apartment a few more days.

Back home, she visited her doctor in Red Wing, Minn., who prescribed two weeks of oral antibiotics. That treatment was extended by two weeks when Susie removed a tick from her body during the course of treatment.

For about a month, Susie slept a lot, had a stiff neck and headaches. The Philadelphia hospital sent her a bill, but her lab results — including a Lyme titer — got lost between hospitals. Nonetheless, her diagnosis was never in doubt.

Susie is OK now. In the days we spoke as I worked on the Lyme stories, she pulled one tick off her daughter and two off herself.